[Plasmapheresis in Landry-Guillain-Barré-Strohl syndrome with or rapidly appearing respiratory insufficiency]. / Plasmaferese na síndrome de Landry-Guillain-Barré-Strohl com insuficiência ventilatória ou rapidamente ascendente.

The authors report three cases of Landry-Guillain-Barré-Strohl syndrome successfully treated by plasma exchange--the only cases in the Brazilian State of Rio Grande do Sul. The authors go through a brief literature revision and discuss more thoroughly the plasma exchange procedure, establishing criteria for its indication.

[A side effect of flunarizine: severe parkinsonism]. / Efeito colateral da flunarizina: parkinsonismo grave.

The author describes the cases of eight patients with severe Parkinson syndrome who had their symptoms vanished after suspension of flunarizine, except for one case whose symptoms remitted partially. The author intention is clearly to alert to this unfavorable reaction, since there may be a lot of patients treated like having Parkinson disease in use of flunarizine.

[Pragmatic elements of the speech of patients with Broca's aphasia: preliminary clinical study]. / Elementos pragmáticos da fala de afásicos de Broca: estudo clínico preliminar.

The author studies three patients with Broca aphasia characterized by the Boston Diagnostic Aphasia Examination, and following A.R. Luria's criterion on the use and comprehension of pragmatic elements of speech--deixis of time, person, place, discourse and social, implicatures of Grice, conventional, generalized and particularized and presupposition. For this, the author works on the development of three hours speech resulted from interviews and also uses specific tests. One of the patients lost the propositional content of speech and internal language, typical of severe dynamic aphasia. The other two showed instability in comprehension and use of time and place deixis only during the tests, not revealing this anomaly at non-artificial conditions. These findings suggest that metalanguage is upset with its specific temporo-spatial elements affected, and it is possible that there is a graduation in the loss of discourse linkage with verbal and nonverbal context in which mediation is made by pragmatic relation in frontal lesions.

[Combined lateral gaze palsy with unilateral internuclear ophthalmoplegia in high mesencephalic-pontine hemorrhage. Report of a case]. / Paralisia do olhar conjugado lateral associada a oftalmoplegia internuclear unilateral em hemorragia mesencéfalo-pontina alta. Relato de um caso.

The authors report a case of right midbrain and high pons haemorrhage with complete external ophthalmoplegia, except bilateral convergence, voluntary and automatic-reflex abduction of the left eye and adduction of this eye with vestibulo-ocular reflex ("one-and-a-half syndrome"). There is voluntary-automatic dissociation of the eyelids motricity and the vertical gaze. Still, there is sensitive-motor hemiplegia at left and asterixis.